


Soul Cake

by zhiverny6



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:06:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhiverny6/pseuds/zhiverny6
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The time Carrot went to visit his family and missed the end of the world.  A dwarf, a wolf and a soul cake duck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soul Cake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eledhwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eledhwen/gifts).



Carrot and Angua sat by the fire at the small inn in the Ramtops, waiting out the rain. The inn was decorated for Soul Cake Day, in a casual sort of way, with a few ribbons and candles and a soul cake duck over the fireplace.  It looked like a picture you’d see in a shop window, with less glitter and without the sense that someone was about to try to sell you a crossbow.  Dwarves didn’t celebrate Soul Cake Day, and Angua’s family never really went in for holidays.  But, she had to admit, it was pretty.

Dwarves hated rain.  Few people who weren’t dwarves knew this, since the difference between a happy dwarf and a grumpy dwarf was not always easy to tell, until the moment when “grumpy dwarf” became “raging homicidal dwarf running at your knees with an axe.”

To a dwarf, rain was just more proof that no civilized creature should live under the sky.  Dwarves were familiar with damp.  They knew how to control it and, as a result, dwarf mines were exceptionally dry.  Weather was simply a problem of engineering.  There was no _reason_ for it.

There was also, somewhere in the mind of every dwarf, the thought that rain made everything just a bit cooler.  Trolls that were just a bit cooler were just a bit more intelligent and, dwarves feared, just a bit more dangerous.

These days, of course, city dwarves lived alongside trolls all the time, if at a slightly lower altitude.  No one thought that way anymore, they were in a Thud league, some of their best friends, etc…  But even young, city-born dwarves, who might wear lichen and give themselves trollish nicknames to annoy their parents became quiet and testy when it rained.  It had passed from reasonable precaution to superstition, which made it more powerful.  Get inside, it said.  Stay down.

Carrot was a dwarf.  He was also a watchman, biologically human and, some believed, the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork, but whatever else he was, he was a dwarf.  He patrolled in the rain without complaint, and she knew that if she said, “Let’s go,” he would smile and go.  Still,  Angua knew they wouldn’t be leaving until the rain stopped.

 Vimes had tried to instruct him that rain was a watchman’s best friend, on the theory that most criminals preferred to stay dry.  A watchman could find a sheltered doorway and have a smoke, knowing that any crimes were being committed indoors and were therefore not his problem, at least until after the rain had stopped.  Angua knew this was one of those lessons Carrot had trouble with.  She suspected he would rather be out in the rain going door-to-door, asking people if they needed help with anything and, by the way, who was that nice man trying to open their safe with a crowbar?

Angua didn’t especially like rain, either.  She always imagined she smelled wet dog.  She knew this was untrue, but the sense of unease persisted.  No one would tell her, that was the thing.  Carrot would be too polite, and anyone else would be too scared.  Also, in the back of her mind was the treacherous voice urging her to dash out and roll in the puddles.

“Happy Soul Cake Day!”  The proprietress of the inn put a small soul cake in front of each of them, and a little soul cake duck carved out of butter between them.  “Carrot,” she said, smiling hugely, “so good to have you home!”  She moved in as if to hug him – she looked like the sort of woman who hugged all her customers – but stopped short and just beamed at him.  Carrot did that to people, sometimes.  They loved him instantly, but with a sort of formality.  You just didn’t hug Carrot.

 “And your young lady!”  She smiled at Angua.  People didn’t rush to hug Angua, either.  “Not the best day for it, but it should clear up in no time.  Don’t you worry.”  Ah, thought Angua.  Lives in the Ramtops, close to the mine.  She knows about dwarves.  “Now, this is on the house, but is there anything else I can get you?  No?  All right, but come by before you leave.  There’s something I have for your mother.”

Angua watched her go, wondering.  “She knows dwarves don’t celebrate…”

“Yes.  But she doesn’t celebrate Krak d’Gah, either, and yet my father gives her a new axehead every year.  I don’t know what she does with them all.”

Angua pondered this.  She didn’t sense any veiled hostility, some war of comparative religion through inappropriate gift-giving.  Maybe it was cross-cultural relations in a small community.  Or maybe it was just friendship.

Or maybe, somehow, it was Carrot.  He did that to people, too.

She took a bite of her soul cake, a small golden cake soaked in honey and something that tasted of apples.  Mostly apples.

“We should probably get going,” Carrot said.  “It’s a long walk up to the mine, and I’m sure they’ve begun the feast already.”

Angua nodded.  Cheery had warned her that dwarf reunions could be enthusiastic, and didn’t necessarily require the presence of the returnee.  “They take _days_ ,” she’d said, with the dread of someone who preferred a nice glass of sherry and a glossy magazine of beard accessories, or even a small chemical explosion.  “Lots of feasting and singing in groups.”

“Sounds like my family,” Angua had joked, though Cheery had only given her a worried smile.  People didn’t want a werewolf at the feast.  Generally, “werewolf” and “feast” were two things people didn’t want in the same sentence, let alone in their homes.  It didn’t matter if she was a vegetarian most days of the month.  It was those other few days that people tended to focus on.

She had always refused to come, afraid she’d meet small, worried faces, hoping they’d misunderstood Carrot's creatively spelled letters.  But when Carrot had sent word of his visit, his father had sent a clacks asking if Angua would be coming with him.  If they were going to have a new daughter, it had read, it was about time they met him.  By the way, they’d been having some trouble with wolves around the entrance of mine shaft eight, and they wondered if Angua might have a word with them, and remind them that Ramtop sheep are tasty and had fewer pointy metal bits.  Practical people, dwarves.

“Big day in Ankh-Morpork,” said Carrot.  “It was nice of Commander Vimes to give us leave, with all that was going on.”

“Mmm,” Angua agreed.  Big day.  A rumor had gone around the city that on Soul Cake Day, the true king of Ankh-Morpork would appear to claim his crown.  It had to do with an old prophesy, or an alignment of the elephants, or something about adding up the ages of all the top wizards in the university divided by the height of the librarian.  No one was really sure, but on that day, the king would appear and begin a glorious reign of a thousand years.  Or the world would end.  Either way, everyone wanted to be there when it happened.

People came from all over the disc, renting rooms, buying souvenirs, eating Dibbler’s True King or End of the World Specials (though most of them did this only once.)  It was a great success.  A few of the guilds suggested turning it into an annual event, though wanted to move the date a bit farther from the Soul Cake shopping season.  Some pointed out that this kind of thing seemed to happen in Ankh-Morpork every few years, anyway.

It only became a matter for the Watch when some people began taking it too seriously.  A few had been convinced to sell all their possessions to some nice men from the Shades, or donate them to the temple of Ollie the Crocodile God which, it turned out, was completely unaffiliated with the more widely known temple of Offler.  At this point, the Patrician Took An Interest, and Commander Vimes, who was not uninterested himself, joined the festivities.

“I hope that poor Lord Starshine is all right,” said Carrot, carving little webbed feet into the butter duck with his fork.  “He seemed so upset.”

Starshine, head of Citizens for the Kingdom, had stormed into the Watch House and demanded to see Captain Carrot.  Carrot, who was in fact fairly hard to miss, heard him out.  Starshine claimed to have found the one true crown of the one true king.   He said the restoration of the kingdom was so vital for the future of Ankh-Morpork that it didn’t matter all the people he’d had killed to obtain the crown.  At this point, most of the rest of the Watch began to listen to him as well, and a few began taking notes.

“Think of your duty to your people!” he had shouted as they took him down to the cells.  “Think what you owe them!”

Carrot seemed shaken by the whole encounter.  He stood absentmindedly polishing the same spot on his helmet and then, without a word to anyone, turned and walked out into the street.  Angua started after him but he gave her such a haunted look, she slunk back into the Watch House and sat silently next to Cheery, waiting with the rest of them.  Half an hour later, he walked back in and went up to see Vimes.  No one even tried to listen by the door.  He came out of the office slowly, with a stone-faced Vimes behind him, and together they went down to the cells.

“I’ve given a lot of thought to what you’ve said,” Carrot told Lord Starshine, “and I think you are right.”

Starshine screeched in joy.  Vimes said nothing.

“I’ve been neglecting my duty to my people.  I’ve asked Commander Vimes for leave from the Watch.”

Vimes looked up at the ceiling, his mouth a tight, thin line.

“By rights, I should be working in my father’s mine,” Carrot said.  “He isn’t getting any younger, and I am his son.  He is the dezka-knik, the king of the mine!  I should be learning from him.  It’s my duty.  I mean,” he said, looking Starshine right in the eyes, “I might be king one day.”

Angua watched Carrot sitting across from her, pushing the last crumbs of the soul cake around his plate.  Carrot didn’t lie.  He _couldn’t_ lie.  And yet…

“He seemed so disappointed,” Carrot said thoughtfully.

Angua had been there.  The man had _cried_.

“And I’m a little worried,” he said.  “I’m afraid Commander Vimes _might_ have given him the impression I had actually quit the Watch and was leaving to run the mine.  He didn’t tell him we would only be gone for two weeks.”  Carrot did seem bothered by this.  “I mean, my father is only two hundred years old!  He’ll be king for years!”

Angua stared at him, saying nothing.

Carrot carved a smile into the bill of the butter duck.  “The return of the duck,” he said, quietly.

Angua frowned.

“When I first left to join the Watch, Mr. Varneshi told my father I was a duck among chickens.  Because of my, um, height,” Carrot explained, embarrassed.  “He said I should go to the city to learn to be a duck.  It was all a bit confusing at the time," he admitted.  "And I have _tried_ to be a good duck.  But I still want to be a good chicken.”

Angua sighed.  “You _are_ a good chicken,” she assured him.  She put her hand next to his, her smallest finger covering his.  “And you are the best duck I know.”   Carrot smiled, and Angua’s world was suddenly a little brighter.

She also tried to remember what the third animal in that odd duck-chicken-something dish was, and wondered what would be served at the feast.

"Well, I suppose I'll give this to my mother,“ Carrot said.  "There's some fine dwarf workmanship here."

He reached into his bag and drew out a crown, old and slightly bent, but clearly a crown.  At noon on Soul Cake Day, Carrot of the Watch held the crown up to the light and examined it.

“Starshine gave it to me,” he said, distantly.  “No, that’s not quite true.  Detritus did.  Commander Vimes told him to throw it down some deep hole far away, and Detritus asked if I knew where he could find one.  I said I thought the Patrician had one, but Detritus said my father’s mine would be good enough.  We didn’t want to bother the Patrician with trivial things.”

“I guess my mother will put it with all the others.”  He looked up at Angua.  “People seem to keep _giving_ them to me, you see.”

Angua wondered, as she often did, if Carrot could possibly be as simple and honest as he seemed.  And she knew that he was.  But she also wondered if, somehow, he was having some private joke on the rest of the universe.

“And I got new boots for my father, and a pickaxe for my mother.  Oh, some good candles...”

Either way, they had received a clacks from Cheery that, after they had left, the furor in Ankh-Morpork had died down.  It seemed people hadn’t been waiting for the king to be revealed so much as _persuaded_.  Now the city was back to its usual, treacherous, miserable, extraordinary self.

“Look,” she said to Carrot.  “It stopped raining.”


End file.
